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From Brooklyn to Portland: Composer Kenji Bunch returns to his roots

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Kenji Bunch can't wait to try out the piano that crossed the country from Brooklyn. After 22 years in New York, the composer and his family returned to Portland, where he grew up.
(Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian)

The lane that leads to Kenji Bunch's house winds through a forest, dips down a ravine and ends in a remote clearing. Birds sing. Sun dapples the ground ferns. You almost expect Hansel and Gretel to come to the door.

Quite a change from Bunch's Brooklyn condo, where he lived until last month, with takeout on every corner, subways to work, club gigs and noise 24/7. After making it in New York for 22 years, Bunch is back where he grew up.

Portland is good at raising talent and letting it go to bigger cities and opportunities. But with a wife and 15-month-old daughter, Bunch, 39, is reversing course, closing a circle he began tracing when he left town after graduating from Wilson High School in 1991 to study viola at The Juilliard School.

He's a composer now, and still a viola player, writing music in a style that weds high and low traditions of folk, country, classical and jazz reminiscent of Edgar Meyer, the MacArthur "genius" and double bass player. Bunch embodies new creative impulses by classical composers attuned to American sounds. His return will enrich Portland's small yet committed composing community as well as add a superb violist to the city's clubs and halls.

Three days before the moving van arrives from Brooklyn, the house near Tryon Creek in Southwest Portland is nearly empty. Bunch's wife, Monica Ohuchi, can't wait for her seven-foot Steinway grand piano -- which took nine men to wrangle down one tight flight of stairs -- to fill the living room. But, as eager as they are about the piano's arrival, a patch of forest outside excites Bunch even more.

Fifty feet from the house, Bunch envisions his own composing hut in the trees.

Gustav Mahler had one. So did Leonard Bernstein.

The hut is one reason Bunch came home. He wants more time to compose and a hut will focus him. Like scores of composers before him, Bunch hopes to find inspiration in nature. Beethoven and Johannes Brahms took daily walks. Mahler's music hut cowered below a rock face towering hundreds of feet above an Austrian lake. The colossal cliffs became the introductory theme of his massive Third Symphony, a unison chant by eight French horns, which he dubbed "What the rocky mountain tells me."

Bunch imagines running on the soft paths along Tryon Creek.

"As inspiring as it was to be in the middle of everything, it's also inspiring to be in quiet," he says, imagining his hut rising from the moss and ferns on a slope behind the house. "I want composing to be a full-time thing. Making this commitment means making it serious."

Bunch's music is shiningly original. Call it neo-American: casual on the outside, complex underneath, immediate and accessible to first-time listeners. A piece such as "The Dog Breath Express" on his driving, playful 2011 CD "Unleashed!" rocks 'n' rolls, slows for a Sunday after-church stroll, then dashes off again. The title track wails the blues with heaving octaves that riff like Jimi Hendrix. Bunch turns classical music's most-teased instrument into a metal band, then a Bach organ chorale.

Here's another Portland connection. Bunch equates composing with the emergence of New American cuisine in the culinary world, drawing inspiration from "locally sourced sounds," he says.

"Particularly here in Portland, there's been a renewed interest in elevating classic dishes of American regional cuisine with the use of local resources and ingredients, the techniques of classical European traditions and the artistic imagination unique to each chef. I draw inspiration from the locally sourced sounds I hear around me and the uniquely American art forms they come from, then combine these elements using the influence of my classical background into my own personal vocabulary that strives to honor the past while looking ahead."

Emmaline, 15 months. and Coffee, the family dog, look pretty happy in their new home. Emmaline bangs out a tune on her own piano, perhaps showing early signs of musical aptitude. Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Bittersweet goodbye

From the moment they met at Juilliard, Bunch and Ohuchi, who is from Seattle, talked about returning to the Northwest.

"It was one of the things that drew us together," she says.

Before Emmaline arrived, sitting for the moment all fuzz and smiles in Mom's lap, they had steady musical careers. Bunch won the Young Concert Artists award 1998, which greatly boosted his visibility. Since 1961, YCA has identified exceptionally promising young musicians, from pianist Emanuel Ax to violinist Pinchas Zukerman. More recognition followed. The New York Times called Bunch "A Composer to Watch" and author Alex Ross cited him in his influential book about music in the 20th century, "The Rest Is Noise."

As the founding violist of the Flux Quartet, Bunch premiered Morton Feldman's epic Second String Quartet in 1999 -- all six hours of it -- and repeated the piece in Oslo and Melbourne. His love of bluegrass kept him playing in a band for 12 years, the same length of time he taught precocious kids at Juilliard's pre-college division. He's had his music performed on six continents by 50 orchestras, and has been recorded on big-name labels such as Sony Classical, EMI, and RCA.

"New York was amazing in a lot of ways and it was everything the myth says," he says, "but it got to the point where, with the family, it made more sense to do something like this. We want Emmaline to grow up with the outdoors." So, another reason to return.

But, no major decision comes without loss.

Ohuchi, who earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in piano at Juilliard, left behind a large number of piano students. She hopes to create another studio in Portland, as well as to perform.

Says Bunch, "Portland has become a really intriguing place for the arts. Monica and I would like to be part of that. Trends like Classical Revolution PDX and the Cello Project, small groups in unusual venues, are recontextualizing classical music. New York allows you to create your own narrative. That can be really liberating, but you also have the potential to lose perspective."

Bunch tests out his mandolin after spotting in in the moving truck. A classically trained composer, he loves the sound and energy of roots music in his works. Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian

Portland's Fear No Music ensemble, dedicated to new music, is one of those intriguing groups, too. Bunch will lead FNM's Young Composers Project, filling in for a year for director Jeffrey Payne. The program pairs professional composers with students and culminates in a concert of the students' music each year.

"Having a composer of Kenji's stature working with the students is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Payne says. Bunch and Fear No Music go way back. While he was a student a Juilliard, FNM commissioned a new work from him, called "Road Trip."

"The chance to work with Kenji again and to have him in Portland feels like old home week for the group," Payne says.

On his last night in New York, Bunch performed one of his pieces with the prestigious American Composers Orchestra. The name of the piece? "Until Next Time." The orchestra had performed his music before, but that concert was special, he says.

"New York will always be a part of us. It has such soul. Only in the process of leaving did we realize we had a great run."